


The choices we make, when we have no choice left

by Kara_luna



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Experimentation, Gen, Suicide, Torture, nothing explicit but it is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 06:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19193668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: "She's my daughter and my world. I suffered and I hurt, but she will know what it is to be loved. Even if it kills me."Decades in the future, a young mother is forced to deal with the repercussions of scientific innovation. In a world where it is commonplace to genetically alter fetus' to obtain desirable features, where there is an entire industry to design children like dolls, the public is left unaware of the horrific consequences. The drawbacks that are hidden behind closed doors and cages, where even hope cannot penetrate the walls governments have worked oh so hard to build airtight.





	1. Chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> Please be wary, this is not a happy story nor will it have a happy end. It is also an original work so please be mindful of that, this is not a fan fiction and I don’t want to mislead anyone into believing it is.

Hannah Morgan was an individual unlike many other females, she had been sterilized by the government periodically since her birth, isolated and financially supported due to her unique genome. She carried a certain gene, one that under the right circumstances could cause a rare mutation in her offspring/s.

Therefore ensuring she never had children was preferable, unfortunately, teenaged interns are incompetent. On the 24th anniversary of her medications, the 16-year old that was meant to inject her with a hormonal implant to exterminate her eggs injected a specimen from a local sperm bank instead. She left under the impression that would be the end of her treatments that year, back to her quaint little farm in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. The day she woke up with an extreme case of morning sickness marked the end of her life as she knew it.

A gene that activated the salivary gland to secrete a toxic, pesticide like gas, one that could escape through the child's breath and infect the air around her. If only pregnancy tests didn't need 6-8 weeks to show positive, if only that pimpled intern had realized they were missing a gamete, if only, if only. If only that little baby hadn't infected the world with its toxic breath. If only humans had ended their DNA splicing before they played god. If only that mother didn't have to watch the forests and fields wither and decay because she couldn't let them take away her only baby, her only family, her only friend, her only everything. If only, if only.


	2. Chapter 2

To give birth was an incredible feat, painful and long, but incredible nonetheless. To give birth without the aid of medical personnel or equipment, while not unheard of, definitely required a woman of a special caliber of bravery. 

Resting in the tub of her own afterbirth and fluids as she swaddled her precious child was the moment Hannah swore she saw color for the first time. The first time she truly heard, touched, felt. Emotions swirled through her head as her vision swam from exhaustion and her child cried. Her child. HER child. Tears of joy dripped from her eyes as she cuddled the wriggling bundle to her chest and her smile stretched larger than she could ever remember it being. 

Even alone in this small, secluded farmhouse in Alabama, she was happy, for the first time in her life there was someone to hold and to love and to never leave. This baby will live, she vowed that day, I don't care if I have to run to the ends of the earth and beyond, this child will know what it is to be loved. 

Darkness welcomed her vision, narrowing in on her view of the bathroom's peeling blue wallpaper, the white bathtub jolted in her eyes as she fought for awareness. No one would find her before she awakened, she knew that, yet the fear of being unaware while her baby slept was panicking, to say the least. Soon though, even she could not fight sleep any longer and rested her head against the white basis of her bathtub.


	3. Chapter three

Children grow fast, as Hannah was now learning, she'd read about them plenty after her pregnancy test but nothing really prepares someone for the real thing. The passing of her monotone days was now marked by each new development in her child. One week passed, Lyla's raven hair curled into ringlets that brushed her milky white ears, Four weeks passed, Lyla's eyes faded from her baby blue hues to a soft gray. Two months passed, Lyla pointed out the wolf as her favorite animal in her small yellow nursery room after smiling a sunny and breathtaking smile for the very first time at her mother. If Hannah was asked, she would vehemently refuse to admit the first time she saw Lyla smile, she cried with joy. 

Six months passed, Lylah showed a new fascination for Hannah's hair, grabbing and tugging and gently untangling, well as gently as a young child is able, her babbling increasing in volume and frequency. Hannah didn't care her daughter had inherited her father's dark tresses and lightened skin tone, traits Hannah did not possess, Lyla's beautiful steely gray irises were all her mother and to Hannah that was more than enough. 

Eighteen months passed. Soon Lyla would begin to speak, soon she would begin to understand what her mother told the hospitals and officers on the phone while she clutched Hannah's skirts in her small chubby fists or peeked from around the wall of the kitchen's entrance, interested in the sounds her mother responded to on the small black device in her hand. Soon she would begin to know that her mother was the only one in this world who would ever love her. Hannah turned from her spot on the porch bench to watch Lyla tumble along the darken dirt field that stretched for miles in all directions from their quaint little house. 

She felt a pain in her heart to see her child play in the earth, earth that would sprout flowers and fields of grass she could never get close enough to touch. The books of farms boasting crops and cattle were stacked sky high in their nursery, Hannah found as many as she could whenever she had to journey out to the store, if her little girl couldn't know what it was like to pet a dog, then she'd buy a stuffed animal so she could pretend Lyla could. If her daughter couldn't touch corn, then she'd bring back plastic food for Lyla to play chef with, in their kitchen. Their isolated location may have been to stop the spread of the pesticide to large parts of the nation, should something like this occur, but at the moment is only worked to the government's disadvantage. 

Hannah had broken all contact with family and friends as a young child when she was diagnosed, there was no one to come and check to see if anything was amiss until the pesticide spread too far. The math had been done already and they still had at least another four months before the amount of wilderness that had been decimated would be brought to a suspicious level, and then another two months for an inspection to be scheduled. By the time someone got to their house to see what had caused the issue, they would be long gone and across the country to escape the manhunt that would no doubt follow closely after the government realized that Hannah was nowhere to be found. In the linen closet between the nursery and Hannah's bedroom was a bag packed deep within the blankets and sheets, hidden away from prying eyes.

Lyla would not learn to speak, it was decided, Hannah would restrict her speech when Lyla was around to hear her. She would never teach her how to read or write, she would never go to a school anyway, therefore the chances of her picking up words more than a few throwaway nouns, were extremely low. No homeschooling. If they were forced to hide, Lyla would not be in danger of saying something too loudly and getting them captured, if they did get caught, then Lyla would not have to hear what the government thought of her. She didn't need to know her corpse would be dissected and her mother killed, she didn't need to know what was in the sharp syringe the plastic, smiling nurse would gently inject into her arm. She would never be burdened by the knowledge of who she was and what she was doing, to her baby the world would love her just as it did all other children. Lyla didn't need to know the truth of why she never saw her mother eat, why they never shared meals, why everything she ate was either meat or freeze-dried cubes. After all, ignorance is bliss.


	4. Chapter four

She was wrong. She thought it would be over a month before someone came to check her farm, she thought they were safe. She was wrong. So she sat at the edge of the river, her daughter bundled in her monkey onesie and placed in Hannah's lap. The water bubbled over smooth stones of granite along the riverbed and ground. Clear blue skies stretching as far as the eye could see and leafy emerald trees forming a forest behind them. They sat for an hour, watching the grass begin to shrivel and the tree's bend with the weight of their rotting bark, it was the moment when the first tree fell that Hannah turned her head back to the river. Salty drops fell to join the water by her feet as she hiked Lyla to her hip, her baby giggled and smiled at her, her small fingers poking into her mouth in excitement. She never got to see the beautiful river before.

"I'm sorry sweetheart," her mother mumbled over and over and over and over as her eyes glazed over and she saw everything she was about to lose. Warm summer days watching Lylah attempt to draw a dinosaur, cuddling up together in Hannah's bed when someone has a nightmare and can't sleep alone, nights spent daydreaming of watching a future Lylah graduate school, marry, have kids of her own. It was easier to ignore the fact those things would never happen, it was easier to pretend they had a future. It made it so much more difficult when Hannah looked out her window and spied the dust cloud of wheels coming down a dirt path a minute or so from their house. It was harder when she saw that future they never had disappear forever. 

So there on the riverbank, a mother made the ultimate sacrifice, her eys8es steeled with resolve and she stepped into the clear stream, feeling the fresh spring water run over her toes for the last time. Lylah babbled a question as she cocked her head at Hannah. 

"Hush little one" Hannah coed, knowing full well Lyla could not understand her, a wobbly smile painted itself across her lips in an attempt to be comforting. Lyla's giggling and bright expression showed it had worked, and Hannah's smile became just a bit more genuine. Yet her expression faltered as her ears picked up on the sound of the truck stopping, no doubt on her earthen driveway to enter her home. To invade her last place of safety from government shots and prodding and experi ments  and  d rug s an d     FE AR   ! So MuCh FEA r So MucH EXPERIMents JUst stOP THe NEEDLes THEY   HUURT  !

  Jumbled thoughts pounded in her skull as panic lapped at her stomach and dread caused iced chills down her spine. Swallowing the lump in her throat and remembering she would never have to suffer in those white, lonely rooms with the sharp instruments and plastic smiling nurses. She was free as she let out her shaky breath and her determination cemented itself. She had lived in a world of isolation and DNA tests, altering every gene in her genome to be normal. She spent her entire life in a laboratory because the world decided they wanted to have customized, perfect dolls instead of children. Because the world was selfish, because the world did dangerous, risky things to innocent people without ever considering the damage. Without ever informing their precious science experiments how much they will lose in the process of "Scientific Discovery."

Never would she go back to that world, there she sat in her river as the water bubbled over her lap and encased her waist in its frigid embrace. She couldn't save her baby from the infinite blackness, but she could save her from being another lab rat out of the millions the government kept locked up in their cages, far away from the eyes of the public. Not her baby. Not her Lyla. Stroking her soft chin, thick with baby fat, Hannah gently moved the little girl's lips apart as Lyla watched her curiously, entranced by the pretty, shiny blue pill her mother held in her palm. Gently placing it into Lyla's mouth she smiled and mimed swallowing for the child to repeat, the blue pill slipped down the little girl's throat, as it did seconds later to Hannah when she brought another to her own lips and tilted her head back for better access. Gently ruffling her daughter's hair as she became drowsy and rested her small figure in the crook of Hannah's shoulder and neck, tucking her face into the soft shirt to nap peacefully. Her dark curls began to straighten as the salty water droplets dripped onto the ringlets, dampening the hair. 

"I'm sorry sweetheart. I'm so sorry my little wolf." Hannah gently pressed a kiss to the back of Lyla's pale, cooling neck,   
"I'm so so sorry." Her breathes quicked as her lungs began to slow their pounding and her lips tinted blue. Eyes dulling steadily as she swayed in her place, the sobs overtaking her body as she shook with the weight of what she had done.

"IM SORRY, I HAD TOO I HAD TOO I HAD TOO! I love you i love you i lov yo i lv u i..." The stream's water burst forth as two bodies hit it with the force of a thousand mistakes. The world silenced itself as the river swept over stones to caress the fallen. Hidden away in a small farm, middle of nowhere, Alabama, an officer called in on his radio to HQ.

"This is Robert Newberry reporting case #35400, the residence has been abandoned. Request to begin a manhunt for the subjects?" Static filled the silent clearing as wind rustled through the trees and the porch swing eerily rocked back and forth in the breeze.   
"Permission-" The radio failed.


End file.
